


The Parting Glass

by tenshinokorin



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Ghost Stories, bishonenink halloween special, no unsolicted concrit please, still stuckyish in spite of the missing -ucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 09:59:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2543432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenshinokorin/pseuds/tenshinokorin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That I should rise, and you should not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Parting Glass

_Oh, all the comrades that e'er I had_  
 _They're sorry for my going away_  
 _And all the sweethearts that e'er I had_  
 _They'd wish me one more day to stay_  
 _But since it falls unto my lot_  
 _That I should rise and you should not_  
 _I'll gently rise and softly call_  
 _Good night and joy be with you all_  
-trad. Irish

 

"So here's the bathroom," Tony continued, "All granite, once I can find some that doesn't look like recycled tombstone. Tempered copper vessel sink and all that jazz, Pepper's got the drawings. What are you doing on Halloween?" 

Steve shook off his torpor. He'd spent the better part of an hour listening to Tony Stark elaborate on the difficulties of remodeling, especially following alien invasion and without running afoul of the ludicrous demands of NYC building codes. Steve had only really grabbed the surface details: Tony was making apartments for all of the Avengers in Stark Tower, this skeletal space of struts and drywall would eventually be Steve's, bathroom something something jazz tombstone, and now suddenly, something about Halloween. Just when Steve thought he could handle the twists and turns of Tony's logic, he found himself utterly upended by this one. "Halloween?" Steve repeated. "I don't know. When is that, anyway?" 

Tony stared at him, and Steve knew, at once, that he'd said something that made him sound like a little green man from Planet 1947. 

"October 31," Tony answered, as though telling Steve something obvious, like that the sky was blue or that the usual complement of human fingers was ten. 

"Nothing, I guess," Steve shrugged. "Little too old to be begging for penny candy or bobbing for apples." 

"You aren't doing nothing," Tony said, attempting to grab Steve's shoulder in a comradely way, and having to give it up when he realized that Steve's height only made such a gesture look ridiculous. "You're coming to the annual Stark Industries Halloween bash, and it's costumes required. And no wearing your suit, that's cheating." 

"I'm not dressing up in some stupid costume, I'm a grown man--" Steve began, and then swallowed back the rest of his scoffing protest once he got a full measure of Tony's expression. 

"Yes, well," Tony said, briskly. "There've been many advances in the time you were under, Cap, and one of the most important ones is the discovery of something called _having fun_. It's probably a strange concept for you, but I'm sure you'll get the hang of it." 

"I know how to have fun," Steve snapped. 

"Prove it," Tony challenged. "Halloween night, Stark Tower, seven p.m. But don't think you'll beat my costume." 

"You're probably just coming in your suit--" 

"Work clothes are cheating, I already told you." Tony folded his arms. "As a matter of fact, I'm thinking of dressing up as a zombie." There was a pause, a pause that Steve knew meant something huge and awful was coming, and Tony did not disappoint. "...of my dad," Tony finished. 

Steve groaned, in mingled revulsion and disbelief. "Tony, are you serious?" 

"On rare occasion." 

"That's utterly tasteless!" 

"Of course it is!" Tony said, exasperation showing now. "It's _Halloween_. If you want good taste, wait for Arbor Day or something. Otherwise--" He jabbed Steve in the middle of the chest. "Be there, on a bear. But only if the bear is an integral part of your costume. Now all the walls are going to be soundproofed, because nobody wants to hear Clint and Natasha going at it at three in the morning. Of course, I don't even know if they'll stay here, since they're S.H.I.E.L.D., but better safe than sorry. For the flooring, I was looking at marble, but that's cold as fuck, so--" 

And Tony was off again, back on his original track, leaving Steve with the conversational equivalent of whiplash, wondering what in God's name was expected of a man on Halloween in the twenty-first century.

 

"Costumes?" Pepper looked up from her tablet, and studied the line of Steve's frown. "I guess it depends on what you want to be, really."

"I had my fill of silly costumes doing my war bonds gig," Steve said, falling into one of the plush leather couches that had somehow survived Loki's war. The crater the demigod had left in the floor was still there, covered by plastic sheeting. Pepper was trying to contact the quarry directly, so the replacement stone's grain wouldn't clash too badly with the original. "So what I want to be is something that doesn't make me look like a performing monkey." 

Pepper's lips twitched, and Steve could tell she was trying not to smile, to spare his feelings. "It's not really about being silly. I think looking sexy or fun or original or scary is what most people go for." 

"I'm not big on parties anyway," Steve continued, as though she hadn't said anything. "Maybe I can come as a section of wall or something, so I won't have to deal with Tony's zombie Howard costume." 

Pepper's face fell, but it was in resignation more than shock. "Did he tell you that?" 

"Well, yes." Steve frowned at her. "You don't think I'd come up with that on my own, do you?" 

"Steve, Tony never tells _anyone_ what he's coming as for Halloween. It's the biggest-kept secret of the party." 

Steve blinked. "You mean he's not coming as a zombie?" 

Pepper shook her head in firm denial. 

"Then what is he--" 

Pepper shook her head again. "I'm sorry, I can't tell you. He'd kill me. Besides, he makes me sign a non-disclosure agreement for it every year. But let's talk about your costume." She set her tablet aside, leaning in towards him in a way that was warmly reassuring. Pepper was very good at that, after all her years smoothing over the debris left by Tony's Stark's bluster, and she had never once made Steve feel like a fossil. "What's something you always wanted to be?" 

 

Steve was late for the party, in spite of his best intentions. How was he to know how hard it would be to get a cab on Halloween night? He had accounted for construction delays on the Brooklyn Bridge, but not gangs of moaning zombies and scantily-clad vampires running unchecked in the streets. When Steve eventually managed to secure a cab, even the driver was wearing some kind of light-up antennae. 

It was after eight by the time he made it to Stark Tower, and the biometric scanner on the private, second-floor entrance let him in with an accommodating beep. Steve looked down over the balcony railing to the main lobby below, and stopped in his tracks. An incredible change had been wrought upon the place. The lobby fountain had been dyed a poisonous green for the occasion, and a dense special-effects fog flowed over the floor. Massive candelabras poked out of the mist like skeletal trees, and Steve wasn't certain that the fluttering ravens perched on them were fake. Ragged black drapery wafted in a subtle breeze from crumbing stone arches, splintery harpsichord music prickled around the room from invisible speakers. Tilting grave markers, seemingly stolen from the yard of St. Mark's, punctuated the room at sinister intervals. And this, Steve realized, wasn't even the actual party. This was just the line to get in. 

Entry to the Stark Industries Halloween Bash was a charitable donation with an eye-popping minimum price per head, but that was hardly a deterrent to the rich and privileged crowd mingling among the tombstones. Steve did a double-take as he noticed not a few costume versions of himself and his fellow team-mates. Perhaps due to the expense of the costume or respect for the host, no one had attempted Iron Man outright, but Steve counted at least three Thors, two of them women in fanciful evening-gown versions of Asgardian armor. A green woman in ragged purple taffeta had taken Bruce Banner's worst nightmare and turned it into catwalk couture. 

Steve, forgetting he was there for the party himself, could only stare. The crepe-paper streamers and cardboard masks of his childhood had been utterly banished. While he slept, Halloween had transformed from a fleeting remnant of old country superstition into a fantastical fever-dream. Steve had felt a little silly, donning his old army uniform, with its crisp shoulders, 1940's high trousers, and a faint whiff of storage that even Brooklyn's best dry-cleaners couldn't quite exorcize. Now, he felt entirely underdressed. Bracing himself for more modern extravagance, he squared his shoulders and stepped through the elevator doors. 

The pub's belled door jangled as it hit him square in the backside, blocking out the cold smell of London on a wet October night. Even then, Steve could not quite move. The bar was gone, had been gone long before Steve himself had vanished from history. Too well he remembered the burnt-black timbers, the broken glass, the crackle of the blitz sirens in the distance. Bucky's death rushed back to him with the force of a careening train; he grabbed for the nearest solid object to stabilize himself. 

"Hey, here's the man now!" the solid object said, and Steve looked over in wonder at none other than Dum Dum Dugan, his mustache full of beer froth and his hat tipped rakishly over his flushed face. "What's the matter, Cap? Nazi got your tongue?" 

"...Dugan?" 

Dum Dum gave the pub, in general, a dramatic eyeroll. "Hey, barkeep!" he hollered, loud enough to make the many empties on the table in front of him ring softly. "We got a sober man over here, and nothing's worse for the war effort!" He turned back to Steve, clapped him hard on the shoulder. "Sit yer ass down, Cap. You're wearing me out standing there." 

It was with more shock than obedience that Steve's knees buckled under him, and he landed at a table in the company of his comrades. Gabe and Jacques were arguing in French, Jim was yawning into his glass, Montgomery was frowning at the beer drops Dum Dum had just spattered onto his ascot. They were as real and alive as Steve had last seen them--better in fact--and not the faded photographs paper-clipped to the files of men long dead. The bar tabletop was scratched and dented, a truck roared by outside the plate-glass window, the rickety piano struggled to make itself heard over the din. Everywhere Steve saw faces he knew, and that knew him. He lost track of the hellos, or the brief nod and "Cap'n," from fellow officers and London floozies alike. The barkeep dropped a neat bourbon on the table in front of Steve, and Dum Dum roused his fellow commandos for a toast. 

"To the Captain," he said, and it was met with a general cheer. 

"To the Captain's friends," Steve replied, as he had always replied, when they tried to give a toast to him. The liquor was smooth and warm across his tongue, and though it was long past having any kind of effect on him, the taste of it left him strangely lucid. He knew the name of every person there, he knew their unit, the name of their hometown. And he knew, as well, that someone was conspicuous in his absence. 

"...Where's Sergeant Barnes?" He half-expected a sudden silence and averted glances, to remind him that Bucky was dead. (Even though, weren't they all...?) But Dugan only gave him a knowing nod. 

"Eh, he's through there," he said, sloshing his pint glass in the general direction of the back room. "Go get him and tell him not to be such a damn snob, already." 

Steve looked into the adjacent room. It was busy in there too, with shadows jumping and quivering behind the old tasseled curtains. One of them belonged to Bucky. Steve didn't trust himself to give an answer, though he rose and edged through the narrow path between the bar and tables. 

"Hey, Cap," Dum Dum said, something in his tone making Steve stop in his tracks, and look back. They were all looking up at him now, and there was a kind of knowing radiance to them, a seriousness like men at war, a serenity like men with all wars behind them. 

"There's no rush," Dum Dum finished, and lifted his glass, as they all did, in a parting farewell. 

Steve lifted his hand to his temple in salute, and with his heart careening against his breastbone, turned and passed through the curtains to the other side. 

The elevator doors dinged open on the Stark Tower ballroom, and Steve stepped out of it. For a second he tried to hang on to the vision, searching the masked and made-up faces he saw, hoping against hope that one of them was Bucky. But it was no use. This was no heaven for old soldiers, it was only the real world, the real 21st century world, and Bucky was not there. Instead there was Tony Stark, outfitted in samurai armor with gleaming crimson lacquer and an all-too familiar faceplate. His arc reactor was a glowing paper lantern on his breast. 

"Fashionably late, I see," he said, and swept Steve's uniform over with his eyes, from polished boots to the precise angle of his hat. "Not tasteless enough," he announced. "And too much like work clothes. But it's your first try. I'll give you a pass. Next year I'll expect some fake blood, at least." 

When Steve did not answer, Tony's attitude dissolved into one of concern, he leaned closer for a better look. "Hey, Cap. You okay? Not to belabor the phrase, but you look like you've seen a--" 

"No," Steve said, with a bracing intake of air. "No. I just... Halloween's gotten kinda big, hasn't it?" 

"You have no idea," Tony said, and draped an armored arm around Steve's shoulders. "C'mon Cap," he said, guiding Steve towards the far side of the ballroom, "all your friends are waiting on you." 

Steve gave a little nod, found a smile inside him somewhere, and went to join them. 

~o~

**Author's Note:**

> (I started this in 2012, but put it aside. Then there was the Loreena McKennitt version of this song, and Cap2. I just managed to finish this in time to post it. Probably there are errors, please overlook them.)


End file.
